


“Would you like to be buried with my people?”

by RueRambunctious



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Backstory, Hidden Children, Historical References, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Reichenbach Fix-It, Religion, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-01-30 21:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12661608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RueRambunctious/pseuds/RueRambunctious
Summary: The first night of November begins All Souls' Day, when rural parts of Ireland leave out drinks for those they have lost. Jim had not expected Sebastian to track him down in the remains of the home he ran away from.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based upon the distressing real life circumstances surrounding St Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, which you can read about here: nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/28/world/europe/tuam-ireland-babies-children.html 
> 
> If you read closely you might notice a Mary Moriarty. She's not pivotal to this story, but it's an interesting detail.

“Would you like to be buried with my people?”

Sebastian had thought Jim's offer to be a threat at first. Certainly the Irishman's low purr sounded ominously intense.

It had been an offer of marriage and Sebastian had always had a love affair with death. Jim had a skeletal grin and a bony grip icier than death and a cackle that could frighten the devil himself. For a disgraced soldier whose idea of fun was following a tiger down a drain this Irish criminal had been a morbid fascination.

Sebastian had watched through his expensive sniper's sight as Jim's skull shattered with the bite of a gun Sebastian had not fired and Sebastian's fascination had flared into a fullblown obsession.

There was no body to be recovered. If anything was proof that Jim was some otherworldly beast who had stalked this earth it was that, but Sebastian could not rest. 

Where do you bury the body of a devil that disappeared?

Jim, like many devils, had liked stories and tells and puzzles which the ordinary mortal might damn to hell. Sebastian's memories of the darkhaired Irishman were still fresh enough to form daydreams into Jim's Dublin drawl. Sebastian knew Jim's accent shifted on rare occassions without the Irishman's consent. Jim was an awfully clever mimic, but the stumbles into a Galway tongue were never intentional.

Jim had grown up somewhere unpleasant near Dublin Road, Sebastian had learned with difficulty, and had set out to that city early enough in life that it had given the brunet his dominant accent.

It had taken years from that confession for Jim to admit his birth in Tuam. The Irishman had pronounced the name like _chewm_ and darkly alluded to being raised somewhere which swallowed souls, _chewed 'em_ and spat them out.

His ordinarily predatory dark eyes had looked glassy as the dead. Sebastian's privileged schooling had made it difficult to ever hear the _mori_ in Moriarty without thinking of death, and it did not surprise the former soldier at all that Jim hailed from a place whose name derived from the Latin for _burial ground_.

Sebastian has lost his taste for Russian roulette since Jim deep throated a Beretta. Where would the big man be buried? He can hardly be buried with Jim's people _if he doesn't know where Jim's body is_ and cannot bury the Irishman with kin.

Sebastian is boarding an Aer Lingus plane before Jim's enemies have much time to do much more than reel in the aftermath of the notorious little man's death.

It's dark and Sebastian's surroundings are bleakly nondescript when an older man's voice cuts through the crisp winter night.

“Sure you don't know to stay in centre of road tonight?”

The stranger's voice is mildly chiding but Sebastian's flinch is not from the tone or the words: the Tuam accent is so starkly associated with Jim's _intimacy_ that it quite chills Sebastian's bones. Sebastian had loved the devil sure, but even snipers know to fear certain harbingers of death.

Sebastian turns and weakly retorts, “What're you..?”

The words die in his throat.

The older man loping by the swingpark towards him bears a startling resemblance to Jim.

The elder swallows pensively, spits a very careful distance _away_ from the swingpark into the road, and nods. “You'll be expected then.”

Sebastian instinctively follows as the drawn man strides off like an arthritic soldier, absently encouraging Sebastian's choice with a backhanded beckoning gesture.

Sebastian is led into a block of shabby subsidised housing and one home in particular which smells freshly scrubbed.

There is a glass of dark spirits set out on the kitchen table. Two empty glasses are beside the sink.

“Bloody night you chose to come,” the old man mutters. He does not seem to expect a response and instead gestures towards the bottle. “Pour yourself one, and as like you'd better pour one for the young devil as well.”

Sebastian feels perplexed but his hands feel frozen from the weather and the night's peculiarity. He trots obediently towards the open bottle.

The stranger marches stiffly to the staircase and leans heavily on the bannister. He catches his breath then pulls himself up the thinly carpeted steps to rap on a closed bedroom door. “Boys!”

There are sounds of bodies rising and male voices Sebastian cannot quite hear.

The sound of someone far spritelier than the old man _thundering_ down the stairway is unmistakeable.

“You'll trip and catch your death, Jimmy!” the old man cries out.

Sebastian is at the foot of the stairs before he realises he has started taking steps towards the brunet who throws himself from the last step towards him. It's Jim, Sebastian is fairly certain, but the big blond raises his hands protectively anyway. Jim has always been a devil.

“More attentive than I gave you credit for,” Jim says with uncharacteristic hesitance to his words. It almost makes Sebastian doubt this ghost could be Jim, but the way Sebastian's stomach twists as Jim's scalp is under his nose feels unmistakeable.

“You fucking bastard,” Sebastian whispers.

“Might not have been so easy for you to find me otherwise,” Jim comments. Normally Sebastian would consider the small Irishman's tone a sneer, but right now it's all fogged up with something strange.

The other two residents of the house make their way downstairs. Sebastian does a doubletake at the new face, but he is certain _Jim_ is the creature in his arms.

“Bastian, this is my elder brother James, and you've already had the ...displeasure, shall we say, of casting eyes upon my younger brother, Richard,” Jim announces sounding honestly a fraction disorientated.

Richard has a bandage on the back of his head and truly Sebastian does not want to look at it. The associated memories are more dizzying than the bruising grip Jim has taken on his flesh.

“Formerly also James,” Richard adds with a yawn. “Excuse me.”

Sebastian wants to laugh darkly, but he somehow manages to grimace non-threateningly enough to pass for politeness. “Drink?” he blurts.


	2. Chapter 2

The elder James creaks off to bed as though more dry bone than mortal by now. Richie Brook has had his fill of staring at the white-faced Sebastian and turns to stumble back up the stairs. The actor is clumsy, sure, but a bullet wound to the back of the head can do that, however carefully you shoot.

Poor Sebastian is near as white as the paper targets left crumpled in the gun range (perfect head shots always, until recently, when Sebastian entirely lost the taste for them).

“'Spect you'll be needing that drink then,” Jim comments. His accent is stronger than in Sebastian's dreams and seems to wake the big man up a little. Jim's voice is the scalpel which severs Sebastian's inability to look away from Richard's bandaged head.

The house is clean but does not smell alive. If the men here are alive for tonight only the setting would not disprove it. Sebastian has to hold the thick kitchen table tightly to help his legs support his near bloodless form.

Jim moves through the kitchen like a ghost and pours another two fingers of spirits which he pushes towards Sebastian like an order. The blond stares at Jim's bony fingers but raises the glass to his lips as though bewitched.

Jim paces a little with the bottle as though marginally concerned Sebastian might swing for him once his senses return.

Jim's voice is odd in the room, as though for a long time no one has spoken there. “Was it an explanation you came for, or..?”

Sebastian's voice cracks like a gunshot in the quiet house in the silent street. “I came for you, you devil!”

Jim crosses himself like he's so surprised he has quite forgotten his godlessness. “I almost forgot how much _life_ is in you.”

“There'll be damned less in you if you _ever_ take off again without talking with me first!” Sebastian snarls.

Jim's eyes flicker blackly. “I'm hardly answerable to you, Basher. I-”

The solid table is no longer between them and Sebastian has a firm hold of the wrist which has defensively raised the heavy bottle above Jim's frail head. Jim's bones feel sharp and dry as a dead bird picked clean.

Sebastian squeezes just to feel if there's a pulse and his trapped monster grunts in pain. Sebastian snatches away the bottle and slams it down on the table. The sudden smell of alcohol makes him think this might be real.

“Sit down, you bastard,” Sebastian hisses.

Jim obeys like some magic has constricted the part of his wilful spirit that would ordinarily baulk at being ordered. His wrist is red as though Sebastian's fingers remembered every time they crossed in the hope they'd touch this devil again.

“Do I need to circle you in salt to make you stay?” Sebastian asks.

“I'll thank you not to mess my kitchen,” Jim snaps. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “My brother's kitchen,” he amends.

“All born on the other side of the blanket, I take it,” Sebastian surmises.

“You already know it, or you'd not be here,” Jim drawls. His wrist fades to pink.

“Three fucking _James Moriartys_ ,” Sebastian grunts. “I read the list. I didn't...”

“Old James up there got an apprenticeship then joined the army,” Jim offers. He reaches for the spirits and pours himself a glass. Sebastian watches the Irishman drink and half expects to hear liquid pour onto the floor.

Jim swallows as though human. “Our mother left the home for a position as a domestic. She asked for James back and naturally wasn't granted him.”

Sebastian leans back in his seat. It is a night for stories it would seem.

“She got in trouble again, and the master of the house didn't see fit to pay her for her silence or the like. She got dumped back in the home -still young, mind you- and had myself and my twin.” Jim purses his lips and his features twist in a way that might have been pity or grim amusement on a human face. “Apparently she was rather sick in the mind or spirit as well as the body. Insisted we were both called James. Didn't seem to accept that she could have been in the situation twice.”

“Richard got adopted?” Sebastian surmises.

“By the Brooks, yes,” Jim agrees. “He was an agreeable child, if a bit sickly.”

“And you stayed in the home,” Sebastian states.

“Until I ran away to Dublin, yes,” Jim agrees. “Sickly and unpopular; not much of an existence. I certainly wasn't missed.”

“Like the rest of them poor kids under the swingpark,” Sebastian says.

Jim stares into space for a moment. “Aye,” he says at last. He takes another slow sip.

“What happened to your mum?” Sebastian asks.

“Asylum in Ballinasloe,” Jim sighs. “Someone had his way with the poor bitch in there and she ended up in the laundries for the rest of her days.”

“Christ,” says Sebastian.

Jim shrugs and pours more. “Magdalen for repeat offenders, just the way of it. She was lucky not to have been sent there when she was carrying us.”

They talk for hours about Jim's past. Of Mass at 8 in worn, ill-fitting hobnailed boots; porridge and tea for breakfast in a Gothic building which smells of beeswax; of gates unlocked for cake deliveries from a bread man unbothered by the emaciated state of one hundred and twenty five sickly young children. 

Jim's head is jerking from fighting sleep by the time he mumbles about his younger sister Jamie Moriarty tracked to America. The big blond beside him wonders whether he is perverse enough to dream of his dream dreaming.

Sebastian carries his dark-haired devil upstairs at some time long past the witching hour. There are only three doors in the cramped little subsidised housing: an open door leads to a tiny bathroom and the other two presumably to bedrooms.

Sebastian opens one door a creak. Jim sleeps against his shoulder like the dead.

The room is dark but Sebastian can make out two thin twin beds. For actual twins. Weak light from the grimy window pane illuminates the bloody bandage on Richie's abused skull, a halo of white in the otherwise dark gloom.

Sebastian carries Jim to the unoccupied bed and peels back the sheets. The blond is almost surprised to find Jim does not ordinarily sleep in a coffin lined in claret velvet and burgundy satin.

The bed creaks as Sebastian places Jim down like a doll. Richard barely stirs at the disturbance. Sebastian feels a strong yet ridiculous relief at the proof Jim must surely then be made of something other than moonlight and spite.

Sebastian stations himself at the foot of Jim's bed like an angel from the nursery prayer the Irishman had called a Black Paternoster, whatever that had meant. Sebastian was Church of England, and found it a little perplexing that Jim often knew more about Sebastian's own form of Christianity than he himself did.

_Mathew, Mark, Luke and John,  
Bless the bed that I lay on.  
Four corners to my bed,  
Four angels 'round my head:  
One to watch and one to pray,  
And two to bear my soul away._

Jim reaches out to Sebastian in his sleep and surprises the big man with a promise. “I'll explain tomorrow. M'sorry.”

Sebastian clasps the frail hand tightly to assure himself the moment exists and watches Jim all through the night.

In the morning Sebastian catches sight of the swingpark through a window as the Moriarty brothers bustle around him like a drowsy poltergeist. _A different species_ Jim had once described himself as. Sebastian pictures the sallow, sickly, segregated boy sans twin or anyone at all seeing his reflection for the first time not in Richard but a dirty car mirror. Sebastian imagines growing up in a home with walls lined in broken glass, hungry and uneducated and unloved.

For a moment Sebastian feels sympathy for the devil.

Then Jim sits him down and reluctantly explains his antics: the faked death and disappearance. The kitchen table gets flipped without Sebastian having any memory of doing so and he advances on the slight Irishman with all the righteous fury of an avenging angel.

“You leave me again and I'll follow you to hell itself to rend the skin from your bones to wear as a reminder you tethered your damned soul to mine,” Sebastian warns.

“You know where to bury me this time,” Jim muses.

The howls that emanate from the house for the next hour or three have the neighbours ready to call a priest for an exorcism.

“Did I not promise you holy hell if you angered me, damned hellspawn?” Sebastian pants afterwards. He resets Jim's nose carefully.

“Did I not promise I'd love you in this life and the next?” Jim drawls. He puts his thin fingers either side of the face he has gouged harsh red lines down and draws Sebastian close for an immortal kiss.


End file.
